Medicine and Science

The World Health Organization has published a major and long-awaited report on sexual health, human rights and the law. The report contains a specific section on intersex people, as well as other stigmatized social groups including lesbians and gay men, and transgender people. More information Read a full statement on this report by OII Australia… Read more →

Lizzie Reis writes about the M.C case taken by Advocates for Informed Choice, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Crawford family and pro bono lawyers. Writing at Nursing Clio Reis says: M.C. had been identified male at birth, but his genitals were sufficiently indeterminate that surgeons removed his ambiguous phallus, a testis, and testicular tissue… Read more →

Australian intersex organisations OII Australia and AISSGA, together with the National LGBTI Health Alliance, participated in the country’s federal Senate Inquiry on involuntary or coerced sterilisation. The inquiry primarily focuses on people with disability, but the terms of reference specifically include the sterilisation and sexual health of intersex people as well. The oral hearing on… Read more →

Earlier this month, the Swiss National Advisory Commission on Biomedical Ethics published an opinion document, On the management of differences of sex development, Ethical issues relating to “intersexuality”. Copies are available via the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health in English, French, German and Italian. This is a brief review of the key points in… Read more →

OII Australia, together with OII Aotearoa/NZ, today released a submission [PDF] to the American Psychiatric Association (APA), regarding the draft Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition. The APA is the body that, until 1973, classified homosexuality as a mental disorder. The APA currently regards gender non-conformity to be a disorder, including gender non-conformity by intersex people.

ON the Third Day of Intersex we draw your attention to Intersex Genital Mutilation (IGM). What is intersex? Intersex people are people who, as individuals, have congenital genetic, hormonal and physical features that may be thought to be typical of both male and female at once. That is, we may be thought of as being… Read more →

ON the Fourth Day of Intersex we draw your attention to intersex and medicine, of intersex and its uneasy relationship with medicine and medical practitioners What is intersex? Intersex people are people who, as individuals, have congenital genetic, hormonal and physical features that may be thought to be typical of both male and female at once…. Read more →